In answer to those who questioned his credentials, and the source of his teaching, Jesus claimed that it came from God who sent him. But how do we know that this is the truth? Jesus said, “If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.” Lynn Anderson claims that the “very first and most important step toward faith in Christ is to decide whether or not you really want to believe and honestly face the reasons why you choose what you choose.” (If I Really Believe, Why Do I Have These Doubts)

Faith, when you get down to it, depends upon whether you choose to do God’s will (if God exists), whether or not you want to do God’s will. It comes down to motivation. If God exists, are you willing to respond to God’s call in Christ or not? This touches on the heart, or the will, not just the head, or the intellect. Anderson maintains that doubt is “more likely to be rooted in hidden, internal reasons of the will than in conscious, intellectual searching.” People may give all sorts of reasons why they are not believers in Christ, but more often than not, they have chosen not to believe.

What are some of these hidden, internal reasons of the will which block the motivation to believe?

There is the psychological defense. Doubters see belief in God as a psychological crutch. They view believers as emotionally insecure who have invented God because they couldn’t cut it alone. But what if we are created by God to be emotionally insecure without a loving relationship with him? What if we are designed by God to believe in him, and his absence leaves a vacuum in our lives which generates this need? The psychological need is a genuine need. Miguel de Unamuno said,

“To believe in God is, in the first instance, to wish there may be a God, to be unable to live without him…. if I do believe in God…it is principally because I want God to exist, and next because He reveals Himself to me through my heart, in the Gospel, through Christ, and through history. It is a matter of the heart.”

That is why the Bible says “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” God rewards us with his love when we are genuinely seeking him.

Then there are the emotional needs not to believe in God. Our pride makes it difficult for us to admit we need God. Our relationships may be preventing us from believing – we don’t want our friends to think that we have gone religious. This is called in the Bible, ‘love for the world’. It would be ridiculous to refuse to accept that which we know to be true because we have an emotional need to appear self-sufficient and strong in the sight of others. Our pride and our secular friends will not last forever. They will fail when we most need emotional support. “The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.”

Another, and current, reason for doubt, is that of history. Many, as children, have suffered abuse from authority figures, either in their families, or in the church, which has served as an extended family. There are “large crowds of doubters who have been scarred through betrayal by professing believers – relatives, ministers, priests, elders, business partners, mates, mentors, or media evangelists. Anger, disillusionment, and mistrust over this kind of betrayal easily become transferred to God. And, again, the transfer sometimes occurs at hidden, subconscious levels that may surface in the disguise of doubt.”

Allied to this reason for doubt is the history of religions in the world. There has been so much violence and suffering perpetrated in the name of God. The institutional Church, which has enjoyed a position of privilege and power, has often used its position to do terrible things in the name of Christ. There are many people who called themselves Christians because it gave them power, but they did not behave as authentic followers of Christ. Jesus said that, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers.”

We must make a distinction, as Jesus did, between institutional Christianity and the genuine Christian. We do not worship the Church, but Jesus Christ.

Through the centuries much has been done in the name of Christianity that does not reflect the teachings of Jesus. When evil has been done in the name of Christ, it is not the will of God, but the will of sinful men. The early Christians were effective missionaries because they took care of their neighbors, the poor, widows, and others who were in need. They protected children, especially baby girls who were often thrown away at birth.

Most genuine Christians live under persecution, and suffer in the name of Christ rather than make others suffer. You can’t blame Jesus and his followers for all the evil that has happened in his name. Some missionaries exploited natives they were trying to convert, but most missionaries were faithful to the gospel of Christ and saved the natives, where they worked, from cruel barbarities. They established schools and hospitals, and gave hope to those they served.

While Muslims reject Christianity because of the Crusades (although their own history of violent military conquest and terrorism is far worse), many Jews reject Jesus because of the Holocaust. Martin Luther contributed to the problem with his hatred of the Jews. Luther was a genuine Christian, but he was sadly and grievously mistaken in his views about the Jews. In that instance, he did not live up to the ideals of Jesus. In contrast to the passivity of so many Christians and church leaders in Germany under Hitler, there was the heroic example of Martin Niemoller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer of the Confessing Church movement, who were willing to suffer and die rather than acquiesce to the official government policy.

Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the Nazis for being implicated in the plot to assassinate Hitler wrote from prison,

“If we are to look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems actually to be a psychological and sociological law; the power of some needs the folly of others. It is not that certain human capacities, intellectual capacities for instance, become stunted or destroyed, but rather that the upsurge of power makes such an overwhelming impression that men are deprived of their independent judgment, and – more or less unconsciously – give up trying to assess the new state of affairs for themselves. The fact that the fool is often stubborn must not mislead us into thinking that he is independent. One feels in fact, when talking to him, that one is dealing, not with the man himself, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like, which have taken hold of him. He is under a spell, he is blinded, his very nature is being misused and exploited. Having thus become a passive instrument, the fool will be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. Here lies the danger of a diabolical exploitation that can do irreparable damage to human beings.”

If history can be a reason to doubt belief in Jesus, it also provides many good reasons to believe in Jesus. Atheism has resulted in terrible violations in human rights. Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung were all perpetrators of great violence. Christianity, on the other hand, has been deeply involved in helping the poor, the disadvantaged, and the disenfranchised. Christians built great educational and cultural institutions. The positives of Christianity overwhelm the negatives. Nevertheless, our failures should cause us to be humble in our attitude toward others. There are nameless men and women who have humbly and courageously upheld the Gospel through the centuries, who have served in obscurity, who have given their lives to help others, who have left the world a better place, and who have struggled to do the right thing despite incredible pressure to do otherwise. The civilizing ideas of liberty, conscience and truth can be traced to Christianity.

Lastly, a person may be reluctant to have faith because he or she simply doesn’t want to do things God’s way. Many people do not want to become Christians because they do not want to have to obey or follow the teaching of Jesus. They don’t want to give up their freedom to do their own thing. They want to spend their money on themselves and their selfish pleasures rather than see it as loaned by God to do his will. Stewardship, sharing and giving are a tremendous threat to this kind of person. It is not so much a matter of doubt and faith as a matter of choosing to do one’s own will rather than God’s will. It is not so much an intellectual reason to doubt as a moral one. Helmut Thielicke put it this way:

“If a person learns to bring God into the picture and therefore begins to believe, then he ceases to be so passionately self-willed. Looking back, he discovers that it was this very autonomy, this centering his life on his own ego, that made him seek unbelief and made him fear that faith would threaten his self-will.”

We choose whether to believe in Christ or not. We choose whether to follow Christ’s teachings or not. We choose based upon all sorts of motivations, all sorts of hidden, inner reasons of the will. If we have a problem in believing we need to be brutally honest with ourselves. We need to take inventory of our inner selves. Could there be any reason – either conscious or buried in our subconscious – why we might not want to believe? Take out that reason and look at it honestly and see whether it constitutes a genuine barrier to believe or simply an excuse to avoid submitting our lives to God’s will.

Remember that Jesus said, “if anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.” If you choose to risk doing God’s will by living as though God exists and has a claim on your life, you will discover whether the teaching of Christ comes from God or not.

Even if you discover that you honestly don’t want to believe, at least the uncovering of your real motive will enable you to deal with your decision more openly and honestly. Or it may propel you forward to overcome your reluctance, and cause you to be willing to risk believing after all. You need to choose every day what you believe.

Soren Kierkegaard writes: “In the end the archenemy of decision is cowardice. Cowardice is constantly at work trying to break off the good agreement of decision with eternity… Cowardice settles deep in our souls like idle mists on stagnant waters. From it arise unhealthy vapors and deceiving phantoms. The thing that cowardice fears most is decision; for decision always scatters the mists, at least for a moment. Cowardice thus hides behind the thought it likes best of all: the crutch of time. Cowardice and time always find a reason for not hurrying, for saying, ‘Not today, but tomorrow’, whereas God in heaven and the eternal say: ‘Do it today. Now is the day of salvation.’ The eternal refrain of decision is: ‘Today, today.’ But cowardice holds back, hold us up. If only cowardice would appear in all its baseness, one would recognize it for what it is and fight it immediately.

Whereas decision reminds us of the end to come, cowardice turns us away from finality… A good decision is our will to do everything we can within our power. It means to serve God with all that we’ve got, be it little or much. Every person can do that. In the end, failure to decide prevents one from doing what is good… This much is certain: the greatest thing each person can do is to give himself to God utterly and unconditionally – weaknesses, fears, and all.”

What does one have to lose? And consider all that one can gain. Jim Elliot’s famous remark about mortal life and eternity is still profound: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” He was martyred at age 29 trying to bring the gospel of Christ to the Auca Indians in Ecuador. The witness of his commitment made a profound impact on me at age 16, and resulted in my offering myself for the ordained ministry. I was not alone. His example spurred many to similar endeavor. His life and death brought forth much fruit.

For many years, my wife and I sponsored a needy child through the work of World Vision. Four times a year their magazine came in the mail. It was filled with stories of how children throughout the world were being helped by World Vision. But from time to time there are also heart-rending stories of the plight of millions more who needed help. Some people attribute evil to God, and claim that since he is supposed to be the author of all things that he should be blamed for diseases and poverty. I have a local correspondent who sent me a poem by Philip Appleman to bolster his argument for atheism. It included this stanza:

I think that no one ever made

a poem as powerful as AIDS,

or plagues that may in summer kill

half the bishops in Brazil

and share the good Lord’s Final Answer

with clots and cholera and cancer –

for God concocted pox to mock us,

staph and syph and streptococcus:

poems are made by bards or hacks,

but only God makes cardiacs.

Doubt rears its head in my life when I start entertaining difficult questions about the world. When I learn about primitive and poverty-stricken human beings, I ask myself how they can ever find life in all its fullness? I read about people with little hope, who live on the margins of life, like the huddled masses in Bangladesh, or the refugees in various countries of the world, and I ask what purpose God has for their lives? I see children who are crippled by land mines, or abused by parents, and I ask how God can be real and loving in the face of such evil? I see people who are mentally ill, or handicapped in other ways, and ask questions about how they can experience peace and joy in their apparent vacancy, watching television all day, doped up and chain smoking? I look at my own life and wonder how a person like myself, who has never intentionally missed a meal, who has had the opportunity of education and travel, and never been unemployed, should be privileged and others deprived? I look up into the sky and realize that the universe goes on for billions of light years, and wonder how my life, or that of anyone on this planet can be significant? Are we just numbers, I wonder? How do we make sense of life?

What questions do you have? All of us have difficult questions that affect our ability to have faith, and give us reasons to doubt. Some of you might have questions about loved ones dying. When wars occur, and accidents happen, and tragedy strikes, we ask, “Why?” If there is a God in heaven how can these things happen? Where can we go with our questions?

I go to the book of Job. You know the story. Job loses his children, his livestock, and his health. He is destitute and depressingly sick. His friends come to comfort him but end up making him feel worse. Eliphaz accused Job of unacknowledged sin. Bildad said that he needed to repent and God would restore him. Zophar chimed in with similar advice. Their answers to the questions I raised would have been that it was God’s will that other people suffer.

Job refused to accept his friends’ shopworn belief that calamity had struck him because of his sin. I refuse to believe that people suffer and die because it is God’s will, or because God wanted them in heaven, or that they are going to hell anyway. I want more of an answer than that. Just because I am a believer doesn’t mean that I settle for simplistic explanations of life’s problems. I struggle every day with the tragedies that I see on the television screen and in the newspapers. I have questions to which I have no answers as yet. I can identify with Job when he cried out to God, “Oh, that I had someone to hear me! … let the Almighty answer me.” (Job 31:35)

Job asked a lot of questions and he got his answers in the form of more questions which the Lord asked him (Job 38-41). “I will question you and you will answer me.” (Job 38:3) In essence God said to him, “You cannot understand because you are not who I am. You have not existed as I have existed. You have not created as I have created. You cannot comprehend what I comprehend.”

Gary Parker in The Gift of Doubt: From crisis to authentic faith, writes that he found three revolutionary truths in the book of Job that transformed his thinking about God’s ways in the world.

“First, I discovered that God has no obligation to answer any of our questions. God came to Job and he comes to us not because we force him to answer, but because he chooses of his own free will to share his Person with us. When God spoke to Job out of the whirlwind, he did so not to give him all the answers, as if God were on trial, but to place Job on trial. We cannot hold God hostage to our questions.”

God has no responsibility to acknowledge, much less answer, all our questions. God’s ways, as Isaiah puts it, are higher than our ways, and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts. God graciously answers many of our questions, but he has no obligation to answer any. When we were children, we were asking “why?” all the time. As parents we know we cannot answer them all to a child’s satisfaction, and so we resort to having to say at times, “You’ll understand when you grow up.” Not every “why” of life has a reasonable answer. There are things we cannot understand, or as Job put it, “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.”

“Second, God does not count our questions as sin against us. Significantly, at the conclusion of the book of Job, God returns Job’s wealth to him. Then God rebukes the three friends who had counseled Job incorrectly. God never changed his initial opinion of Job as “a blameless and upright man.”

The questions Job raises with God are legitimate. They are questions any human being in pain would ask. The Bible is full of examples of seekers after the truth that are asking good questions about the struggles of life. There is no attempt in the Bible to silence discussion or debate. Christianity has always been at the forefront of enquiry, research and education. Our God delights in us using our minds to understand his creation, the nature of grace and the problem of evil.

“Third, the questions we ask can carry us into a deeper understanding of God than we have ever previously enjoyed. Job would never have known God on such an intimate level if he had not dared to express his pain and uncertainties. In Genesis 32 we read how Jacob wrestled with God. In that encounter Jacob moved from a superficial relationship with the Lord into a face-to-face fellowship. At the conclusion of that dramatic episode Jacob said, “I have seen God face to face.” In a similar fashion, Job admitted, “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.” (Job 42:5) When we wrestle with God honestly and openly, we have the grand opportunity to develop a deeper intimacy than does anyone who stands at a distance and waves a cheery hand.”

“The honest struggle of Job with God can become helpful to us in our movement from doubt into faith… Through Job, and through other biblical stories, we see that God does not condemn us for our uncertainty. Instead, through the Job story we learn that God would much prefer our honest doubts to a dishonest faith. After all, God is the only one big enough to handle our uncertainties… Dr John Carlton once said, “God can stand our questionings much better than he can bear our indifference.”

When we find ourselves questioning the inequities of life, and we cry out in protest at the tragedies we see, God does not resent our questions, but welcomes them, for he cries out with us. It was God who heard the groaning of his people enslaved in Egypt and mounted a rescue operation using Moses. It was Jesus who reached out to the hungry, the poor, the crippled and the oppressed to heal them and give them hope. It was Jesus who wept over Jerusalem: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” (Luke 13:34)

The playlet The Long Silence, says it all.

“At the end of time, billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God’s throne. Most shrank back from the brilliant light before them. But some groups near the front talked heatedly – not with cringing shame but with belligerence. ‘Can God judge us? How can he know about suffering? snapped a pert young brunette. She ripped open a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. ‘We endured terror… beatings… torture… death!’

In another group an Afro-American lowered his collar. ‘What about this/’ he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn. ‘Lynched… for no crime but being black!’ In another crowd, a pregnant schoolgirl with sullen eyes: ‘Why should I suffer,’ she murmured. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’

Far out on the plain there were hundreds of such groups. Each had a complaint against God for the evil and suffering he permitted in his world. How lucky God was to live in heaven where all was sweetness and light, where there was no weeping or fear, no hunger or hatred. What did God know of all that man had been forced to endure in this world? For God leads a pretty, sheltered life, they said.

So each of these groups sent forth their leader, chosen because he had suffered the most: a Jew, an Afro-American, a person from Hiroshima, a horribly deformed arthritic, a thalidomide child. In the center of the plain they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their case. It was rather clever.

Before God could be qualified to be their judge, he must endure what they had endured. Their decision was that God should be sentenced to live on earth – as a man!

‘Let him be born a Jew. Let the legitimacy of his birth be doubted. Give him work so difficult that even his family will think him out of his mind when he tries to do it. Let him be betrayed by his closest friends. Let him face false charges, be tried by a prejudiced jury and convicted by a cowardly judge. Let him be tortured.

At the last let him see what it means to be terribly alone. Then let him die. Let him die so that there is no doubt that he died. Let there be a great host of witnesses to verify it.’

As each leader announced his portion of the sentence, loud murmurs of approval went up from the throng of the people assembled. And when the last had finished pronouncing sentence, there was a long silence. No one moved. For suddenly all knew that God had already served his sentence.” (John Stott, The Cross of Christ, 336-337)

God did not stay in his ivory tower and issue pronouncements about the world. He came in Christ to suffer and die with us. “Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8) His followers walk in his steps, and walk the way of suffering, not knowing the answers to all the questions that they and others have asked down through the centuries. Anybody who has walked with Jesus has wrestled with pain and suffering, and the dread of insignificance. That is why we walk by faith and not by sight. We follow despite not having all the answers. Because God allows freedom in the universe there will be tragedies, and God does not directly cause them. In fact, he actually grieves with us when we suffer them. The answers will come as we experience the love of God in the Cross of Jesus. For the Creator is also the Savior.

Some people, like Billy Graham, enter into a full-blown faith all at once when they experience a spiritual conversion or personal encounter with Christ. More people, like Billy’s wife, Ruth, experience a slow growth of their faith over a lifetime. The apostle Paul noticed this in his comments about the Christians at Thessalonica: “We ought to give thanks to God for you.. and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more.”

When something grows, it develops from one stage to another. Shakespeare portrayed man as developing through seven ages:

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and pewking in the nurses arms.

And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel,

And shining morning face, creeping like a snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like a furnace, with a woful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws, and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

His youthful hose well sav’d a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big, manly voice,

Turning again towards childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness, and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

(As You Like It, vii, 139)

Men and women develop through different stages in life so that the same person may appear in different roles, and may re-invent himself for the purpose. Opinions may change over a lifetime as new knowledge is received and assimilated. Faith is no different. Faith looks different at each stage of its growth. When we physically or emotionally develop, we change over the years. Our faith changes also. Let us look at these stages of faith and see what they can tell us about the process of change that is involved.

There have been several studies of the development of faith. During a time of great stress and challenge I came across The Critical Journey: Stages in the Life of Faith, by Janet Hagberg and Robert Guelich. It is a description of the spiritual journey which addresses the struggle to find meaning and purpose, the crisis of values and identity at mid-life, the quest for self-actualization, and the healing of early religious experiences. The authors’ goal is to help their reader to understand where he is in his search and where others are on theirs. The sections on the journey inward, and coming up against a wall in my relationship with God, spoke to me about the stage I found myself in at the time. It was an accurate diagnosis of my condition. I found it invaluable as a guide to moving on to the next stage of my faith.

In Will Our Children Have Faith? John Westerhoff suggests four stages.

The first two stages he characterizes as faith’s infancy and childhood. That is when we experience faith from those around us. We don’t actually have to choose faith for ourselves because it is part of our environment as children. Paul talks about Timothy being raised in the faith of his grandmother, Lois, and his mother Eunice. Or we may go through a conversion experience, a born again experience and be babies in the faith, needing to be spoon-fed for a while. “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation.”

When people came to faith in Christ in my church in London we would ask them to attend the Nursery Class, so named because it represented where they were in their faith. Like babies and young children it is a beautiful stage when people are open, innocent, sincere and delightful. We affiliate with the faith of our church, or youth group, or denomination. That is why young people can be so enthusiastic about their faith. They have accepted what they have been taught, and can be intolerant of those who disagree with them.

The third stage is faith’s adolescence when we begin to question everything in order to decide what we are prepared to believe. It is part of individuation, of becoming our own person rather than being the clone of our community or peer group. Westerhoff calls this ‘searching faith’. It is healthy to question so that we can make choices for ourselves that mean something to us. If this stage is discouraged, it can drive seekers into negative options. They may walk out of their rigid church, or their high-control family, in search of freedom of inquiry. Or, if they stay in their group, they may retreat inwardly and become angry and silent. Or, they may stifle their questions, and pretend to believe like everyone else, and sacrifice their integrity. Later in life searchers who have stifled their growth may blame their repressive churches, or their dogmatic parents, for their indifference. But we all have to take responsibility for our own growth in faith.

I can remember, when I was Dean of the Chapel at Gordon College, there was a student who would not attend chapel, or participate in an alternate chapel program of small discussion groups. He was in a high state of rebellion against his father, and all that he represented as a prominent Baptist pastor. In the end I met with him one on one and we discussed anything he wanted to talk about. He worked through his adolescent questioning, went through a failed marriage, and is now a successful Christian writer, and a practicing Roman Catholic.

This stage can be prolonged way beyond what is healthy. We may call it a case of arrested development. The searcher may “slip into a holding pattern, forever circling, never landing, and thus effectively avoiding responsibility.” Although he may no longer be an adolescent physically speaking, the adult searcher becomes an agnostic, taking refuge in the questions as a means of keeping commitment at arm’s length. The apostle James has this person in mind when he wrote, “he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not think that he will receive anything from the Lord, he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.”

“If we let reasonable doubts linger indefinitely, they can make us spiritual hypochondriacs – or perpetual adolescents. Paul talks about those who are “always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth.”. There is a time when you have to ‘fish or cut bait’. You can’t sit on the fence forever. Those who will not move, who will not get off the fence, are making the decision to remain immature. They play mind games with themselves and take refuge in intellectual excuses for not being able to make a commitment either way.

The fourth stage is faith’s adulthood. This is when we own our faith in Christ as authentically ours and not just borrowed from someone else, or something we profess in order to fit in with others. It has to do more with a personal relationship with Christ than the rituals of an institution.

Adult faith doesn’t know all the answers, but is comfortable with trusting in God who does. The faith that has grown to this point is able to give up control to Christ and be comfortable in some settled convictions. The apostle Paul could say in the midst of his sufferings, “I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him.” It is trust in the person of Christ, who, we are convinced, is able to deliver on the promises we have received, and our future well-being.

Where is your faith? What stage are you in? Are you beginning to wonder if your faith is simply a reflection of the group with which you have been affiliated all your life? Or do you feel unsettled, confused, doubting more than you are believing? Doubts need not be bad. Your questions may be genuine. They may need to be addressed in order for your faith to grow to the next stage.

On the other hand, how long have you been searching? If you find that you take more delight in with-holding commitment, and you secretly resent having to close your options, be careful. Your well-fed doubt may really be a cop-out, and it may be time to move on. Don’t be afraid to break out of your holding pattern and resume your flight plan! When we get stuck in our stage of faith, we are no longer growing. We can become hardened and defensive about where we are.

People get stuck for all sorts of reasons. When we get stuck for long enough we get trapped, and we may not know it. Our stage becomes a cage. “By this time you ought to be teachers… but you need milk like a child.”

Getting stuck occurs sometimes from our fear of facing the unknown. Other times it comes from crises that we cannot control. Or it maybe our fear that we cannot control God or our future. Some of us are never satisfied with our stage of faith. We are always looking for more information. We are insatiable learners in the faith. We go to every personal growth experience available. Self-growth can be addictive. We appear to be very open on the surface, true seekers of the truth. But we are closed just below the surface. We are simply afraid to surrender control to God. The risk is too high.

One of the difficulties in relating to others is that we become aware that they may be in a different stage from us. Being in a meeting with others at different stages from us can leave us perplexed and frustrated. It is like adolescents trying to understand what it means to be living in adulthood, or children trying to understand the inner life of seniors. For example, people at the adult stage, secure with what is right for them and with a strong sense of belonging, may think that those who appear to be questioning, or even rejecting their childhood faith, are not strong enough, not faithful enough, not willing enough, or just plain not Christian. There have been times when I have been stuck in my faith development. I have lost my vision, or become disillusioned, or have felt depressed and tired. It is not that I have doubted God, but his presence has seemed less real than at other times. During one such period, I had to be prepared to listen to what God was saying to me rather than trying to keep in control of the agenda. I became aware that my shadow side consisted of those things I saw in other people that I did not like. I had to learn about forgiveness for myself and others. That led on to acceptance and love. Because of my vulnerability, I could sense God’s presence in a new way. It meant asking why I was doing some things. It involved taking a risk in listening to what God was leading me to do that was different from before. I sang: “Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me. Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.” All this required time away from my busyness, a time of solitude – time to reflect.

Faith can go through all stages every day. Some of us find ourselves moving back and forth between stages of faith, searching awhile, and then reverting to childhood trust. There is nothing wrong with childhood faith. Jesus said that we must become children to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Even mature faith keeps on searching, and sometimes cycling through periods of doubt.

Sometimes we cannot see beyond the present difficulties of life. In those times of darkness God gives us just enough faith to take the next step in the fog. We grow in faith as we trust that we are following Christ, even though we cannot see him clearly. Yet we believe that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that true Joy is to be found in going forward in faith, even when we do not completely understand.

King George VI, in his Christmas broadcast in 1939, when the United Kingdom was facing the Nazi threat, quoted Minnie Lou Haskins,

“And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’”

A Prayer:

Lord God, you know what stage of faith I am in at the moment. Enable me to move forward and not be stuck. Help me to let go of my ego, and to recognize that you are God, and to accept you as the Lord of my life. Enable me to be open to your direction. Direct my every thought, word, and action. May I experience your presence in my life, and respond accordingly. I surrender control of my life to you. May the love of Christ control me, and the power of your Spirit refresh me. Give me the courage to follow where you may lead, and to grow in faith, hope and love in my relationships with others. Amen.

Jon Guttman, in his Editorial for the June, 2002 edition of Military History, wrote about three decisive battles that owed their outcomes to calculated risk-taking. He says that officers today are taught risk assessment – the art of comparing the importance of one’s mission against the risks involved. There is actually a matrix that can be used to calculate the relative likelihood and severity of the risk, enabling the leader to determine what can be done to reduce those risks. The risk must always be calculated against the reward. There is a difference between a reckless risk and a calculated risk, and a commander who is skilled at the latter will invariably accomplish more than one who will not accept risk at all.

He cited the calculated risk taken in June, 1942 by Japanese Admiral Yamamoto. Desperate to draw the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier force into a decisive battle, Yamamoto launched a diversionary carrier strike against Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and invaded Attu and Kiska in the Aleutian Islands, at the same time that he dispatched the Combined Fleet to Midway atoll in the Central Pacific. The complicated stratagem was meant to compel the Americans to divide their carrier force, allowing Yamamoto’s main force to annihilate those that tried to defend Midway. But it was undone by the Americans having cracked Japanese codes and learning his true intentions.

Aided by that knowledge, Admiral Chester Nimitz took a calculated risk of his own, sending all three of his remaining first-line fleet carriers to confront the Combined Fleet’s four carriers at Midway. The course of the battle that followed highlighted just how much of a risk Nimitz took of losing everything. But the final outcome certainly justified that risk. In exchange for the loss of the carrier Yorktown, the Americans sank all four of their principal opponents. Yamamoto got the decisive battle he had sought, but without the outcome he had desired, as the Japanese navy retired from its first major defeat in 350 years.

What risks would you be willing to take to win in the battle of life? The patriarch Abraham took enormous risks in his life. Hebrews 11:8-19 records that when God called him to leave his home, and his country, and his family, he went, even though he did not know where he was going. He went, we are told, by faith. Faith here is characterized as risk-taking.

Abraham is held up as the father of us all by faith. St. Paul writes: “He is the father of us all. As it is written: ‘I have made you the father of many nations.’ He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed – the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the ruler of many nations.”

Soren Kierkegaard writes, “Surely Christianity’s intention is that a person use this life to venture out, to do so in such a way that God can get hold of him, and that one gets to see whether or not he actually has faith.”

Often the issues of doubt and faith are described in terms of the intellectual questions people have about God, and life. But, maybe the more difficult questions have to do with whether we are willing to venture out, to risk, to let God get hold of us, to see whether or not we actually have faith. There are many people who profess to believe in God and to follow Christ who have no faith in this sense. They are armchair Christians, who talk the language of Christianity but do precious little about it. Kierkegaard again,

“Truth exists for a particular individual only as he himself produces it in action. If the individual prevents the truth from being for him in that way, we have a phenomenon of the demonic. Truth has always had many loud proclaimers, but the question is whether a person will in the deepest sense acknowledge the truth, allow it to permeate his whole being, accept all its consequences, and not have an emergency hiding place for himself and a Judas kiss for the consequences.”

Abraham did not have the Bible. He did not have a church. He lived in a pagan society. Archeologists have discovered that that Ur of the Chaldees, located on the Euphrates River in what is today southern Iraq, nineteen hundred years BC, boasted an elaborate system of writing, sophisticated mathematical calculations, educational facilities, and extensive business and religious records. They worshipped Nammu the moon-god. The royal cemetery reveals that ritual burials were sealed with the horrors of human sacrifice. Abraham worshipped these pagan gods. At this point in human history “the world was lost in degrading views of God. From the bull-worship of Crete, to the animal deities of brilliant Egypt, from the worship of the Sun-god on the Phoenician coast, to the sadistic and sensual deities of which the sailors who traded to the Indus and the Malabar coast could tell, it was one wide story of burdensome corruption. Some search for something purer, better, holier must have stirred in the heart of Abraham of Ur,” because the Most High God appeared to him and called him out of his native land to go, he knew not where. And he went! What kind of risk was he taking to do that? What motivated him to pull up the stakes of his tent, leave his known world for the unknown, and go on the road? What sort of reward was he anticipating? God made him some promises which made his journey and dislocation worthwhile.

“The Lord said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’”

He made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country. He looked forward to the city that was to come, whose architect and builder is God. He saw his life in this world as a journey where nothing was permanent. He did not put roots down where he lived because he had invested in the future.

God told him that he was to have offspring as numerous as the stars in the heavens, but no children were born to him and Sarah. Then the Lord told him that his wife was to have a child in her old age. Abraham thought it was so funny that he fell facedown and laughed about the absurdity of it.

St. Paul comments: “Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead – since he was about a hundred years old – and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.”

When the child does indeed come and grows into a boy, God tells him to go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on Mount Moriah, and Abraham, saddled up his donkey, and set out to do it. How could he do it? Abraham took the calculated risk that God, who gave him Isaac, when his and Sarah’s bodies were past bearing children, could also raise the dead if he were sacrificed.

Kierkegaard calls Abraham the knight of faith, for he is willing to do what is absurd, to take the ultimate of risks in obedience to God.

“He who walks the narrow road of faith has no one to advise him – no one understands him. Faith is a marvel, and yet no human being is excluded from it; for that which unites all human life is passion, and faith is a passion.”

Did Abraham know all the answers to the questions about God and life? No, of course not. He laughed when God said that he would have a son. He must have doubted at times. But he was passionate in his willingness to take the risk of faith. It was a calculated risk to him because he believed that he could trust the God who called him to venture out in his life.

Miguel de Unamuno wrote,

“Those who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God himself.” Faith that never doubts is a dead faith because it is never exercised.

Abraham did not receive what was promised in his own lifetime. “They saw them and welcomed them from a distance…. Instead, they were longing for a better country – a heavenly one.” He took the calculated risk that God would deliver on his promises.

Kierkegaard:

“Again without risk, no faith; the more risk, the more faith… The absurd is that eternal truth has come into existence in time, that God has come into existence, has been born, has grown up, has come into existence exactly as an individual human being, indistinguishable from any other human being…. Christianity claims to be the eternal, essential truth that has come into existence in time. It proclaims itself as the paradox and thus requires the inwardness of faith – that which is an offense to the Jews, foolishness to the Greeks, and an absurdity to the understanding… To know a creed by rote is, quite simply, paganism. This is because Christianity is inwardness. Christianity is paradox, and paradox requires but one thing: the passion of faith.”

The journey to faith in Christ requires risk, and change. It is as anxiety provoking as undertaking a major trip to an unknown destination. Abraham undertook such a trip and became a model for faith. Life is such a journey. We never know what the future has in store for us. Unexpected challenges cause us to have to respond with decisions and actions that we never anticipated having to make.

In March 2000 I received a call to accept the position of Pastor of Amelia Plantation Chapel on Amelia Island in Florida. I had been living for fourteen years in San Antonio, Texas, where I was the Rector of Christ Episcopal Church, a large congregation in the historic part of the city. Before receiving this call I had anticipated completing twenty years at Christ Church and then retiring back to north-east Florida where we had lived for ten years before moving to Texas. It is true that I had been praying about my future, and was open to alternative possibilities, but I did not expect my prayers to be answered so quickly and in such an unusual way. I guess I did not rightly know what to expect. God surprised me with an option I had not considered.

Amelia Plantation Chapel is an inter-denominational congregation, of mainly retired people from all over the nation, who moved to Amelia Island to enjoy its climate, environment, stunning ocean-side beauty, recreational amenities, and proximity to the city of Jacksonville with all its resources. I had worked in Jacksonville, was familiar with the area, and had many friends there. It was just where we wanted to move back to when we retired. But this was a job!

Did I really want to down-size that much, from a busy, multi-staff church in the heart of a major, diverse metropolitan area, where I was established? In addition, I was about to leave on a three month sabbatical as a Visiting Fellow at St. John’s College in the University of Durham. The timing seemed odd. Yet I was about to be 59 years old, and was aware that I needed to decide what I wanted to do for the next ten years of my professional life. Did I want to continue to do the same thing in the same place, or did I want to try something different? There were enormous risks involved. I would have to take a cut in compensation for the first 18 months. There was no guarantee that the congregation would grow under my leadership. I would be exchanging a sure thing for something quite uncertain.

I, of course, talked it over with trusted friends, and wrote down the pros and the cons of moving. But what helped me the most was an article I read at that time in a business magazine, FAST COMPANY. It was an interview by Polly Labarre with philosopher and management consultant Peter Koestenbaum. He styled himself as a philosopher who helped leaders in business to be successful human beings. This is what he said which resonated with me and enabled me to move forward in my life’s journey.

“How do we make truly difficult choices? How do we act when the risks seem overwhelming? How can we muster the guts to burn our bridges and to create a condition of no return?” The real issues are: “What kind of life do I want to lead? What is my destiny? How much evil am I willing to tolerate?” He quoted Kierkegaard, “Anxiety rules the human condition… it can serve as a powerful, productive force in your life. Anxiety is the natural condition. Anxiety leads to action. Anxiety is the experience of growth itself. It is what we feel when we go from one stage to the next. Go where the pain is.” Koestenbaum went on to say, “One of the gravest problems in life is self-limitation. We create defense mechanisms to protect us from the anxiety that comes from freedom. We refuse to fulfill our potential. We limit how we live so that we can limit the amount of anxiety that we experience. But no significant decision – personal or organizational – has ever been undertaken without being attended by an existential crisis, or without a commitment to wade through anxiety, uncertainty and guilt.”

After mulling these words over, I spent two hours with a counselor who had been helping me to explore issues relating to my personal identity and future priorities. After several days of working through the details, I made the decision to go forward to the next stage of my life, and embraced the uncertainty of the future over the present.

If you want to have faith, then you must be willing to do what God is calling you to do. What is it that he is calling you to do? Listen, open yourself to his inner voice, and you will hear. But you must be willing to act, to risk, to venture, as did Abraham. The reward is worthwhile.

Recently I came across an interview with John Stott, the great English preacher and writer on his life and ministry (80 Years Ago Today: The Conversion of John Stott, www.thegospelcoalition.org). In it he was asked about the state of preaching today. His reply was devastating – in two words: “Miserable, Abysmal”. He went on to say that preaching requires relating the ancient text of the Bible to the modern world. He recalled a conversation he had with two brothers who were raised in a Christian home and were now at university. They told him that they had abandoned their Christian faith because it was irrelevant to the modern world. It was a primitive Palestinian religion that had no application to their exciting contemporary world. Stott wrote a book on preaching entitled Between Two Worlds, relating the message of the Bible to today. But too many preachers either preach about the biblical text with no application of its message to their congregations or preach about the issues of the day without any biblical foundation.

In conservative evangelical churches there is a tendency for sermons to be a commentary on the biblical text with the exegesis of the theological terms but little or no application to the needs of the listeners. It is like listening to a doctrinal lecture about abstract ideas without considering the human condition. It is no wonder that people give up on the Gospel if all they hear in the pews is a repetition each week of theological truths about God, Jesus, the Cross, Salvation, Forgiveness and Heaven. What do these truths have to say about my life today? How do they relate to the purpose of my life, to my meaning, significance, value and happiness? How do I deal with guilt, conscience, my desires, my hunger for love and affirmation, my struggles and suffering, the evil in the world, my pain and loss of relationships, my loneliness? How can I find courage to face another day, to hope for the future, to overcome despair and depression? I long to hear a message that speaks to my present condition, to my heart, my worries, my concerns and brings me comfort rather than flying over my head.

Jesus Christ wants to personally relate to me where I am. He alone can give me an enduring sense of self-worth and personal significance because he assures me of God’s love. He sets us free from guilt because he died for us, from the prison of our self-centeredness by the power of his resurrection, and from paralyzing fear because he reigns over all the principalities and powers of evil. He gives us a new family in the community of the church that cares for us. He promises that history is neither meaningless or endless, for one day he will return to conquer, to destroy death and usher in his kingdom. One of the most fascinating of all the preacher’s tasks is to explore both the emptiness of fallen man without Christ and the fullness of Jesus Christ, in order to demonstrate how he can fill our emptiness, lighten our darkness, enrich our poverty, and bring our human aspirations to fulfillment.

If we fill our minds with the news of the day, with all the conflict and personal problems that beset the world, and the inability of our political leaders and material prosperity to solve them we will despair. But if we fill our minds with the hope of the eternal Gospel and discover how it applies to our lives we can be victorious over all the ills of this life.

Preacher, be faithful to the biblical text but also be aware of the human condition and apply its truths to the needs of your hearers. We are hungry for relevance, for medicine for our souls.

You can learn more about this topic from my book: JOHN STOTT:: A Summary of his Teaching, Published by Langham Global Library.

In 1986, my wife Antoinette and I were in a shopping mall in Christchurch, New Zealand, when we noticed people looking at the televisions in the stores. My cousin, whom we were meeting for lunch, arrived, and said, “Have you heard about the space shuttle?” We hadn’t heard that the Challenger had blown up when it took off from the Kennedy Space Center. The horrifying picture that exploded across the screens that day reminded us of the dangers of space exploration. Seven astronauts died that day. On October 7, 1988, after a two and a half year hiatus from space, NASA launched the Discovery. Five more astronauts put their lives on the line to try again. They put their faith in the engineers to correct the problems and design a better and safer system. They couldn’t know with certainty that they would survive the flight. They couldn’t know with perfect confidence that everything would function properly. But they volunteered to go anyway.

Gary Parker, (The Gift of Doubt: From crisis to authentic faith) sees in this story a parable of the way faith works in our lives. He finds three elements at work. First, these five crewmen climbed on board the Discovery at great personal risk. Second, they responded to the call of their mission out of a deep sense of commitment to the program of space exploration. Third, their commitment spurred them to action. They placed faith in their mission, their ship, their abilities, and their equipment.

Faith can be defined as the willingness to trust our lives to a person or God, whom we cannot prove as trustworthy, before the actual moment of risk, commitment and action occurs. We may believe that God, by definition, is trustworthy. “Here is a trustworthy saying: if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” Faithfulness, or trustworthiness is central to the character of God as revealed in the Scriptures. But having faith, means acting without final knowledge, or proven certainty. It means we go before we know the final results.

When we define faith in religious terms, it means the same thing. But instead of trusting a mechanical ship, or a crew of support engineers, or even our own abilities, we cast our dependence upon God. Religious faith leads us to take hold of a scientifically unprovable God, and it allows him to take hold of us.

This is what Hebrews 11 is asserting. “Now faith is being certain of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”

This is not the same as the description of faith by Ambrose Bierce in his Devil’s Dictionary: “belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge of things without parallel.”

What is the certainty claimed by faith? It is the subjective, personal appropriation of the truth that compels us to respond by virtue of its innate authority that meets our own need. It is not fantasy, the projection of our own desires, as Freud contended “The very idea of ‘an idealized Superman’ in the sky – to use Freud’s phrase – is ‘ so patently infantile and so foreign in reality, that … it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never rise above this view of life.’ He predicted, however, that as the masses of people become more educated, they would ‘turn away’ from ‘the fairy tales of religion.”

It is not insanity, a delusional obsession with fanatical imaginings, e.g. the portrayal of some preachers and prophets in novels and movies. The certainty of faith is the willingness to risk our lives for what we consider to be worthwhile, by committing ourselves to something greater than ourselves, and taking appropriate action to do something about it. We are not talking about intellectual faith in abstract theory, but the faith that causes us to do something different with our lives.

If you review the names of the ancient heroes and heroines of faith listed in Hebrews 11, you will find that their faith resulted in risk, commitment and action based on their trust in the guiding hand of God.

People can have this sort of faith without being religious. Marxists and capitalists place their faith in a political and economic system, which they believe will provide the greatest benefits for the largest number of people. Materialists place their faith in the proposition that happiness comes through the acquisition of wealth and property and spend their lives trying to prove that it is true.

Pascal (1623-1662) put forward the proposition that faith was a wager. Christianity cannot be proved conclusively by reason, but neither can it be disproved. If it turns out that Christianity is true, we have everything to gain; but if it turns out to be false, we have nothing to lose. We should accept the inevitable risk of faith, and gamble on the truth of Christianity. This was the essential step of Pascal: that doubt leads to faith. “You must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then?” We all wager one way or another. Not to acknowledge the wager is to take the risk of losing.

Soren Kierkegaard maintained that

“To gain eternity without risking anything is impossible.. ‘To risk everything on an ‘if’, you say. My friend, if you do not take a risk on an ‘if’, then you take no risk: take away the ‘if’ and you take away the risk. You cannot really have any objection to risking on an ‘if’, for this is what risking is. If therefore you have any objection, then it must be against risking itself. Take care that you are not disappointed, by claiming that you have nothing against risking, you are quite ready for that – only not on an ‘if’, which is just as though one were to say, ‘I have nothing against swimming, on the contrary I should love to swim – only not in water.’

“So a shudder seizes the man, and he reaches out to grasp the others: I must have some certainty before I take the risk, he says. Again, to be certain before one takes the risk is putting the cart before the horse, or filling your mouth with flour before you speak. No, if your mouth is full of flour, you must first get rid of it before you can speak. And so with taking a risk. If a man is certain about something, then there is no risk, if he is to take a risk he must get rid of the certainty, as one who as a child was certain, or thought he was, must get rid of the certainty in order to be able to take a risk – so far is it from being true that you must first be certain before you can take a risk…. This is the cunning of existence: the utmost human certainty is just what fools us most certainly for eternity – and the very least human certainty is just what provides the possibility of eternity.”

In Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, the poet lamented the necessity of choosing one road over another. He could not take them both, so he took the one less traveled. He describes for us the necessity of commitment, risk and action in selecting one path or another. How do we choose which road to take? Our choice involves the risk of faith.

That does not mean making choices without reference to the realities of our circumstances. We don’t choose vocations for which we have no aptitude. We don’t make investments when we have no capital. We don’t follow gurus whose character is suspect. When we hear a voice calling us to take risks, to take action, to make a commitment, we need to test its validity – to test the spirits to see whether they are from God. We test them by the teaching of Scripture, by the counsel of people we respect, by the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit, and our conscience. But when we have completed this process, and we believe that it is a genuine summons of God to us, then we dare not fail to act upon it.

I am a Christian because I believe for a fact that God came into our world through a particular human being at a particular point in history, and invited me to follow him. I had to make a decision to respond to that call. I had to take the risk that Jesus was real and not a fantasy figure. In my reading of the Gospels I was impressed by who he was, what he did, and said, and claimed to be. I agreed in my mind with the substance of his teaching. But I also had to make a commitment to do something about it. I had to decide to act on what I believed to be true. Would I let him into my life as Lord and Savior? Would I trust in his sacrifice upon the Cross as atonement for my sins? When I did, it began to change my life. I began to find that, because Jesus was God the Son, he was not a mere figure of history but a living presence. Each day he talked with me through his Word and Spirit, and invited my response through prayer. No matter where I was, he was present to assist me and accompany me in all that I did. I was never alone. He brought into my life a purpose, a joy, and a peace that I wanted to share with others.

Decisions regarding my future began to change. Up to this point I was planning to go to university and study law, and then go into politics. Now I wanted to share what I had learned and experienced. Just as those who aspired to become astronauts had to go through a specialized rigorous training, I chose a course of study that would launch me into a different kind of orbit. As my college days were coming to an end, I had to decide which seminary to attend. As I prayed about it, I sought information from seminaries in New Zealand, Australia, the USA and England. Since I was an Anglican, I thought I might as well go to England. If I had been a Roman Catholic, I probably would have chosen to go to Rome. If you were going to do it, I thought, you might as well do it properly, and go to the best school.

Can you see the implications of this definition of faith? “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” I was risking a lot by leaving home, making a commitment to go overseas, and to take the actions necessary to make it possible. Yet, all this I did as a twenty three year old. It wasn’t because I had extraordinary faith, but because I was sure that God was leading me, and certain that he would take care of me to fulfill his purposes. Remember what I said before. The certainty claimed by faith is the subjective personal appropriation of the truth that compels us to respond by virtue of its innate authority, that meets my own need. I had accepted Jesus’ authority in my life, and that liberated me from other desires. Faith is not fantasy, the projection of our own desires. Faith is not insanity, a delusional obsession with fanatical imaginings. Faith is the willingness to risk our lives for what we consider to be worthwhile, by committing ourselves to something greater than ourselves, and taking appropriate action to do something about it.

My faith led me to make decisions, and to take actions that literally made me into the person that I now am. My journey to England resulted in my working in London and meeting Antoinette. Our marriage required faith. We took the risk, that though we came from different backgrounds, we were committed to Christ, and to one another, and we took the action that our love required.

When I made the decision to leave New Zealand and go overseas for my graduate education, I had no proof of the validity of my choice. I had no conclusive evidence that God directed me in it. I may believe retrospectively that he did, but I have no conclusive proof. That is why doubt continually plagues us. Without proof, we always have the uncertainty. There is always the possibility that I could have, should have, stayed in New Zealand, and my life would have been very different. But if we possessed proof, then it would no longer be faith, but knowledge.

Clark Pinnock writes, “Faith does not involve a rash decision made without reflection. It is the act of wholehearted trust in the goodness and promises of God who confronts us with his reality and gives us ample reason to believe that he is there.”

What about you? What is Christ calling you to do? Too many people do not experience the benefits of faith in Christ because they are not willing to take the risk, to make the commitment that leads to action. They hold back, they compromise, they delay doing anything, and they miss out on the excitement of faith that could launch them into the discovery of new life. Remember Robert Frost’s famous lines:

“I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”

The book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible expresses the skepticism of a life that has seen most things, and finds it hard to make sense of it all. The more we know about life, the more cynical we can become. We may have more, rather than less, unanswered questions as we age. We may find that religious faith, and personal trust in others, is harder rather than easier to come by. A friend who had experienced a great deal of betrayal and disappointment by people whom he expected more of, shared with me that his wife had taken it “all rather badly as it stings and hurts, and she doesn’t trust anyone just now.” There are plenty of reasons to doubt that there is a good and loving God if we look for them. Some of us may want to have a stronger faith but the advice people may give us may become reasons to doubt.

Lynn Anderson in If I Really Believe, Why Do I Have These Doubts? lists several reasons to doubt, several blind alleys seekers are encouraged to explore that lead them nowhere but to frustration.

First, is the advice that faith requires you to turn off your mind, and to just try harder to believe. “Don’t think about it – just believe!” Wanting to believe, or wishful thinking. does not make it so. Trying to ignore troublesome doubts, and attempting to sweep them under the rug, will not work. We fool ourselves if we try to believe by being intellectually dishonest. Closing our eyes to problems will not make them go away. God made our minds so that we can interpret what is happening in life. We are created to think through our understanding of life. That is why we have a book like Ecclesiastes in the Bible. It is the journal of an intelligent seeker who is struggling with trying to make sense of the issues of life. His words ‘are like goads, his collected sayings like firmly embedded nails – given by one Shepherd’(12:11). They are meant to goad us to action in our search for answers. When difficulties arise in life, we cannot dismiss them as though they do not matter. We must think through their implications and find a resolution of them in our beliefs. To be a Christian is not to commit intellectual suicide as some people contend, even if some Christians behave that way.

John Stott wrote a little book entitled, Your Mind Matters, in which he criticized “the misery and menace of mindless Christianity.” He argues why it is important that we use our minds. “Faith is not credulity. H.L. Mencken…once said that ‘faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.’ But Mencken was wrong. Faith is not credulity. To be credulous is to be gullible, to be entirely uncritical, undiscerning and even unreasonable in one’s beliefs. But it is a great mistake to suppose that faith and reason are incompatible.” He quotes Proverbs 2:3-6

“if you call out for insight

and cry aloud for understanding,

and if you look for it as silver

and search for it as for hidden treasure,

then you will understand the fear of the Lord

and find the knowledge of God.

For the Lord gives wisdom,

and from his mouth come

knowledge and understanding.”

The second reason to doubt is to assume that faith is like something you can catch. To this way of thinking all you have to do is to wait for faith to happen. It will be like waiting for lightning to strike, like it did Saul on the Damascus road.

Parents who take this approach do not influence their children in any direction. They say that their children will make up their own minds when they grow up. Others say that the doubts their children experience will go away when they mature. I heard my aunt and uncle say that about their children. It was an excuse for them not going to church. As a result they deprived their children of the advantages of a childhood Christian education. They have had a hard time in adult life catching up.

More education or maturation does not necessarily bring faith. Faith is our response to revelation, and requires a choice on our part. Many people have reason to doubt because they believe that they have to do nothing and God has to do everything. God calls us to choose. “Choose you this day, whom you will serve.” Soren Kierkegaard calls the refusal to choose, to make a decision of faith, cowardice.

“Cowardice wants to prevent the step of making a decision. To accomplish this it takes to itself a host of glorious names. In the name of caution cowardice abhors any over-hastiness. It is against doing anything before the time is ripe…. In the end, failure to decide prevents one from doing what is good.”

The third reason to doubt is the attitude that faith requires definitive proof. To this way of thinking, conclusive proof in the form of rational arguments is essential to faith. Since such proof is lacking, faith is, what Mark Twain defined as, “believing what any fool knows ain’t so.” But no person can be forced to believe by logic. Faith does not come to a person by being argued into it. If this were so, the smarter people would be the first to believe, and the duller people the last. But the opposite may be true. Paul, who, despite doing a lot of arguing himself, quoted Isaiah 29:14

“‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’ Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world.”

Intelligence levels have little to do with faith. You cannot reach a conclusion about faith in Christ based upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Faith requires a risk, a leap, or it would not be faith. It is a decision without complete proof and leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Faith is a leap based not on proof but trust in the evidence that is available.

There is no life without this kind of trust. We decide what is worthy of our trust without requiring absolute proof. We trust ourselves to all sorts of people, machinery and organizations because we have enough evidence that they are worthy of our trust. We do not completely understand many things we trust every day, e.g. banks, automobiles, airplanes, telephones, computers. But because we have evidence that they work, we use them, act on them, put our trust in them. We are called to examine, not proofs for the existence of God, but evidence of a loving relationship with the personal God. Frederick Buechner writes,

“We all want to be certain, we all want proof, but the kind of proof that we tend to want – scientifically or philosophically demonstrable proof that would silence all doubts once and for all – would not, in the long run, I think, answer the fearful depths of our need at all. For what we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists, not just that beyond the steely brightness of the stars there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind to keep the whole show going, but that there is a God right here in the thick of our day-to-day lives who might not be writing messages about himself in the stars but who in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world. It is not objective proof of God’s existence that we want but, whether we use religious language for it or not, the experience of God’s presence. That is the miracle we are really after.” (The Magnificent Defeat)

The fourth reason to doubt is the belief that faith comes through miracles. If only we could see a miracle happening! Would we believe? Witnessing miracles does not automatically generate faith. Take the Pharisees for example. “Even after Jesus had done all these miraculous signs in their presence they still would not believe in him…..For this reason they could not believe.” Lynn Anderson comments on St. John’s conclusion:

“What an ominous statement. Notice that the unbelief of the people John was describing was a choice. Faith in Jesus would have threatened their vested interests. Consciously or unconsciously, they had chosen to set their hearts against Christ and had continued choosing not to believe in spite of miraculous proof over a long period of time. Finally, their hearts so hardened that even the miraculous signs of Jesus himself would not touch them! It is possible to reject faith so often that we can wind up actually dismantling our believing machinery.

The mightiest signs and wonders cannot change our hearts! Only the Spirit of God can do that! Through the gospel, the Spirit of God can move us to choose faith. But even then, he will not force us – only touch us, convict us, call us on. How we respond is entirely up to us.”

If you ask people who do not believe in Christ, what it would take for them to believe they usually mention one of these reasons to doubt. They want a miracle, or conclusive proof, or they want to wait for divine intervention, or they or their peer group think that faith is anti-intellectual. These reasons, I believe, are ill-founded.

There are plenty of reasons to doubt. We can always find a reason to avoid believing in God and serving him. The choice is ours. But God sent his Son so that we might believe. We have to decide whether we are going to worship him or not. Examine the evidence, by all means. Faith can be commitment based on the evidence. Our mind is engaged. But at the end of the day you still have to take a leap of faith if you want to experience God’s presence. Invite the Spirit of God into your life so that you will know the reality of Christ.

Doubt is a double-edged sword. It can act as either a deterrent or a stimulant. Doubt about whether it was possible to sail west across the Atlantic Ocean could have kept Christopher Columbus from discovering America. Instead, he doubted that the world was flat and that he would fall off the edge if he traveled too far. He used his doubt to spur him on to new endeavor. Doubt, may in fact, help us to recover our faith. Doubt which persists may prove to be of some value. This was the case of a man who gave us a case study of how belief and doubt could co-exist and produced a prayer that has echoed in the hearts of countless others since.

There is nothing worse than having to experience the suffering of your child. A father brought his son to the disciples in the hope that the boy would be healed, but they could not help him. This man is like so many parents today who helplessly watch their child suffering from some malignant disease, caught in the grip of some addiction, or going off the rails by living at the mercy of their peer group. Such parents don’t know where to turn for help. Sometimes all that they can do is to bring them to Jesus in their prayers. The disciples brought this boy to Jesus who, when asked by the father, “if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us.” Jesus replied by raising his eyebrows and challenging the father, “If I can? Everything is possible for him who believes.” What an extraordinary claim! It challenges us today: the extreme possibility of faith. Yet we know that the possibility of healing is not easy. We cannot say to others, “Just have faith.” This is why the boy’s father cries out in his desperation, “I do believe, help me overcome my unbelief!”

He has a faith that struggles with doubt. He is honest about the struggle he experiences. He pleads for help just as he is, a doubter. The father does not come to Jesus with a demand but with humility. He does not try to fake a faith he doesn’t possess. He pleads with Jesus to do what he can. Yet Jesus honors the man who would bring his son out of compassion to seek help. The prayer of the father is the prayer I can own for myself: “I believe, help my unbelief.”

Many of us struggle with doubt even though we have faith and want to believe. For many people pure faith is difficult because of the damage done them in childhood or in the trauma of life. Doubt may have its roots in our basic temperament, or our particular stage in life. Doubt and faith co-exist for many. Yet that may be more normal than you imagine. In fact, there may be a value in experiencing doubt – or unbelief.

Gary E. Parker has written about this in his book, The Gift of Doubt: From crisis to authentic faith. He claims that doubt can do us good, that doubt is not always evil, and that doubt can help us to have a stronger faith. “If we maintain an openness to new truth, …we might find that uncertainty can actually enliven and strengthen our faith. Dr. Clark Pinnock proposes, ‘There is also a good side to this sort of uncertainty… Doubt can spur deeper reflection and further discovery…. Doubting may lead to greater certainty.’”

Gary Parker suggests four ways doubt can be turned to good. First of all, doubt can test the truth of faith. Thomas Gutherie wrote, “Are not many damned just because they never doubt? They go on, satisfied with themselves; not doubting but that they are on the right course, when every step they take leads them further and further astray.”

An unexamined faith may be a false faith. Much of Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees centered on their dogmatic arrogance. They had their minds made up and were not open to other interpretations of the truth. Fanatical adherence to religious conviction is not necessarily a virtue. When the mind is closed to other truth, there is bred in the believer an intolerance and a cruelty that is incompatible with a God of love. Many Muslims and Communists suffer from the kind of fanaticism.

When you go on a long journey in your own vehicle, you don’t assume that the automobile is in good order. You have it checked and serviced for you don’t want it to break down on the journey and inconvenience you. Doubt serves as a testing ingredient of faith. It subjects our beliefs to trials to see if those beliefs have the power necessary to complete an arduous journey. A faith that is worthwhile is a faith that is checked for weakness. Doubt provides that check. To be never in doubt is to invite disaster.

Second, doubt destroys faith that doesn’t deserve our continued allegiance. A naïve trust in something or someone who doesn’t deserve it is destructive. People learn that too much faith in corrupt political leaders, or unfaithful spouses, or fair-weather friends leads to disappointment. Thinking the best of someone, who continually lets you down and doesn’t follow through on promises, is unhealthy. To continue to believe in something that has proved itself unworthy of our faith shows our credulity rather than our common sense.

By 1530, Copernicus had questioned the accepted belief of astronomy that the earth was the center of the known universe. He put forward the theory that the sun was actually at the center and that the earth and the other planets revolved around it. The church rejected his theory, but future discoveries proved him correct. We know what happened to Galileo. Their doubts about current beliefs destroyed faith in a system that did not deserve continued support, and established a new truth valuable to human life.

Any doubt that destroys faith in any false god is good, and serves God’s purpose. When doubt upends a false faith, it serves as an asset to a true one. The faith that cannot survive the trials and tests of life probably didn’t deserve to live anyway.

Third, doubt enhances a faith that proves itself worthy of commitment. Doubt takes faith and exercises it so that it cannot help but grow stronger. If faith never encounters doubt, if truth never struggles with error, if good never battles with evil, how can faith know its own power? How can it enhance its power if it never exercises its perception? A faith that struggles with doubt becomes strong through that struggle.

Robert Schuller tells the story of a tornado that destroyed his family farm buildings. In half an hour nine freshly painted buildings were completely obliterated. Twenty-six years of hard labor had been wiped out. “Dad got out of the car, ordering us to wait, and walked with his cane around the clean-swept, tornado-vacuumed farmyard.” Doubts, I’m sure arose in his mind. “Why did God allow this to happen? Haven’t I served God faithfully? Doesn’t God care about me and my welfare? If God is real, why didn’t he stop this tornado?” As he picked through the trash, he found a piece of molded plaster that had hung on the kitchen wall. The motto said, “Keep looking to Jesus.” So, Schuller wrote, his Dad didn’t quit. With God on his side and, ‘looking to Jesus’, he could start over. And he did just that.

The faith of Schuller’s family stood a stern test that day and it survived. Without question, nothing could have tested their faith any stronger. Their faith gained strength because it had looked into the face of destruction and had not blinked.

Rufus Jones, the Quaker pastor and teacher in Maine once wrote, “A twice-born faith, a rebuilt faith, is superior to an inherited faith that has never stood the strain of a great testing storm. If you have not clung to a broken piece of your old ship in the dark night of the soul, your faith may not have the sustaining power to carry you through to the end of the journey.”

Fourth, doubt forces us to find reasons for our faith. Many deny that doubt has any value. Herbert Williams, in his book, No Room for Doubt, sums up this viewpoint. “Doubting can serve no useful purpose whatever, as it provides nothing we need in the challenging quest for answers. Doubt… is a negative attitude which cannot accomplish in the interest of positive inquiry into problems that are real, pressing, and ever-present.”

This kind of attitude flies in the face of the biblical approach where the apostles argued, debated, and discussed, with people of many faiths, in order to prove the validity of their claims. We cannot expect people to listen to our beliefs if we cannot explain the reasons for our faith. St. Peter wrote, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”

Doubt forces us to express our belief in coherent and rational statements. Doubt makes us deal honestly with the troublesome issues of life. Faith does not require us to bury our heads in the sand lest we be disturbed. True faith will enable us to look difficulties in the eye, and respond with integrity to the truth we know. If you struggle with misgivings and uncertainties, do not be forced by a false sense of Christian piety to hide your doubts. Faithful men and women in history have struggled greatly with the fire of doubt burning within them.

“Like a fire that burns away the underbrush so new trees can reach new heights, our doubts can help us achieve a faith that grows stronger and reigns supreme in spite of the uncertainties we often face.” (Gary Parker)

I don’t believe everything people tell me. The world is filled with people trying to sell me something that will benefit them rather than me. I receive many phone calls and emails every day that are scams. A.I. creates much misinformation. Too many people are ripped off by con artists. If something is too good to be true it usually is. Doubt in these cases is very valuable. It may prevent you from losing your shirt. It is healthy to question the claims of others. Doubt can be very reasonable.

In the mean time, we return to the father who prayed, “I believe, help my unbelief.” His son was healed. What happened to his faith? What needs to happen to us that will bring us to seek help from Jesus? What is possible for us if we believe?

Perhaps you need to make this man’s prayer your own, and bring all your cares, concerns, fears and pains to him for healing. When you do so you will discover that “all things are possible to him who believes.” Prayer changes things. As Jesus said, “This kind [the evil spirit in the boy] can come out only by prayer.” We may try everything else in life, but prayer is our first and last resort. Our need, faith, and our doubt drives us to seek for help. When we do we discover that the Savior is there to heal.

C.S. Lewis tells the story of a military man who, though he confessed to being religious, had no time for doctrines such as found in the creeds. He preferred his religion to be mysterious and experiential, and did not want to know about the facts of the faith. His experience of God was more real to him than the words conveying the affirmations of the faith.

Lewis said that it was like looking at the Atlantic Ocean, and then looking at a map of the Atlantic Ocean. You turn from looking at real waves to looking at a bit of colored paper. “But here comes the point. The map is admittedly only colored paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way, it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. [The creeds] are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experiences of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God. If you want to get any further, you must use the map.”

The military officer’s religion led him nowhere. “In fact, that is just why a vague religion – all feeling God in nature, and so on – is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map.”

Thomas, one of the twelve disciples of Jesus, was a twin. We don’t hear of his twin, and we know nothing about his childhood. But we know that he also, was always asking questions. He never accepted anything without asking for an explanation. That is what got him a few extra lines in the Gospel of John.

It was recorded that on Easter Sunday Jesus appeared to the disciples in the Upper Room. He came and stood among them, spoke with them, and showed them his wounds. We read that the disciples were overjoyed when they saw him. He commissioned them in his service of preaching the Gospel of forgiveness of sins in the power of the Holy Spirit. But Thomas was not there. Why, we don’t know. When they saw him again the other disciples told him what had happened. They gave their first-hand testimony: “We have seen the Lord!” But Thomas was not easily persuaded. He wanted proof. “Unless I see with my own eyes the nail marks in his hand and put my own finger where the nails were, and put my own hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

This desire for first-hand verification is perfectly normal. It is especially understandable when extraordinary claims such as these are made. To have seen and spoken with someone who was certifiably dead cries out for some kind of proof. That is why it is so difficult for modern man to believe anything unless he has had direct experience of it. The resurrection of Jesus is no easier to believe today than it was two thousand years ago. Some people find it easier to believe than others. Thomas needed some proof. He was a doubter of so-called miraculous occurrences. Why was he such a doubter? Why do many people find it difficult to believe the testimony of others, the witness of history, the record of his post-resurrection appearances, the claims of Christ to be God in the flesh, the Lord of all, the conqueror of death and Hades, the authority of Holy Scripture? What causes some people to be congenital doubters?

Did Thomas suffer from existential angst? Philosophers explore the problem of having a fundamental sense of uncertainty about the reality of existence. Doubt and despair can be the result of a basic pessimism about the human condition. Modern atheistic philosophy, that denies any divine purpose, and defines life in terms of a biological determinism, breeds cynicism. Life that is lived on the surface, that seeks to escape boredom and emptiness through material acquisition and pleasure, is prone to perennial doubt. Doubt cannot be always kept at bay by distraction from anxiety that mindless activities afford.

Perhaps Thomas was plagued with troubling questions that he couldn’t ignore. Doubts are often rooted deep in the personality. Did Thomas suffer from emotional mood swings: a manic period when faith was strong, and a depressive period when faith was absent? When we feel good, and life is going well, faith is easy. But when we pass through periods of discouragement, doubts resurface. It is important to distinguish mood swings from genuine doubt. Our feelings have to be offered up to God, to be purified, so that we can experience peace. We can choose to be governed by our feelings or by our daily commitment to follow Jesus. Jesus said, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke [i.e. my teaching] upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Was Thomas at a turning point in his development and personal history? Different seasons of our lives affect our faith and our doubts. Changes in life lead to vulnerability which leaves us open to doubt. Transitions, a sense of danger, insecurity, loneliness, which Thomas must have been experiencing, can cause doubt and fear. Adolescence, mid-life crises, menopause, empty nests, illnesses and retirement bring stresses that cause us to doubt. As we age we ask, “Is there nothing more?” and we face the three big D’s: decline, depression and death.

Did the death of Jesus trigger some emotional connection in Thomas’s life? The loss of Jesus may have led him to contemplate other losses in his life, which he interpreted as abandonment by significant people, and consequent feelings of anger, or lack of value. Some doubts can be traced to painful chapters in our emotional history. Deaths of parents, siblings, or close friends in tragic circumstances, may have left unfinished business. The fact that Jesus had appeared to the other disciples and not him may have upset him. Was Jesus avoiding him? Was he not important? Why was he being put on the spot and expected to believe when the others had it easy? It could have looked to him as favoritism.

Pressure points and crisis events can shape our doubts. Job losses, illness, bereavements, tragedy of one kind or another, may push us to doubt. Loss of children or other people we love, often cause us to doubt that there is a God of love. Perhaps this is what led to Thomas’s doubting. He had undergone the stunning shock and stress of Jesus’ arrest, trial, torture and execution. This was a major life crisis for Thomas. All his hopes and dreams had crashed and burned.

Parental abuse causes distrust and doubt of any authority figures. “New York University psychology professor Paul Vitz, in his book Faith of the Fatherless, studied the childhood of several well-known atheists and saw strong evidence that their rejection of God is directly related to father pain: the death of a father or abuse or abandonment by their fathers. Vitz points out that Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher who declared that ‘God is dead,’ lost his father at age four. Samuel Butler, skeptical British novelist, was often brutally beaten by his ‘pious’ father. Sigmund Freud said his father was a ‘pervert’ and built much of his psychological theory around father hatred. Joseph Stalin’s father beat him unmercifully. Madelyn Murray O’Hair once tried to kill her father with a butcher knife. Vitz suggests that after studying these and other ‘major historical rejecters of God …. We find a weak, dead or abusive father in every case.’ Consequently Vitz urges great compassion for atheists, because behind their unbelief, in all likelihood lies some painful memory. So as you examine your doubts, you may want to honestly confront the possibility that one of your roadblocks to faith may be some pain from the past.”

Dr. Lynn Anderson, president of Hope Network, claims that the pace of our lives breeds doubts. He calls it cognitive overload. The impact of the media upon us transforms every day into a crisis as we absorb the tragic events in the world through our television screens. We are overstimulated by our environment and overcommitted in our schedule. We keep ourselves busy so that we do not have to find time for reflecting and listening. Activism, no matter how well-intentioned, leaves life shallow. It can also leave us with faith that may appear to be a mile wide but may not be an inch deep. Cynicism and skepticism pours over us from the talking heads, and the experts. As in the garden of Eden, the tempter can stimulate these roots of doubt and encourage their growth so that we question the presence of God. The influence of evil seems more pervasive than the power of the goodness of God when we see innocent civilians and children killed or maimed by terrorists. “Where is God in all of that carnage?” we ask.

Henri Nouwen refers to this experience as ‘the absence of God’. But some of the times when God seems to be absent may actually be fulfilling his purpose. “His absence… is often so deeply felt that it leads to a new sense of His presence.”   When we feel that God is absent, he may be more completely and sharply focused in our conscious thoughts, more so than when we take for granted that he is very near. Nouwen writes,

“The mystery of God’s presence, therefore, can be touched only by a deep awareness of his absence. It is in the center of our longing for the absent God that we discover his footprints… In the patient waiting for the loved one, we discover how much he has filled our lives already. Just as the love of a mother for her son can grow deeper when he is far away, just as children can learn to appreciate their parents more when they have left the home, just as lovers can rediscover each other during long periods of absence, so our intimate relationship with God can become deeper and more mature by the purifying experience of his absence.”

When you consider your doubts, look for its roots in your basic temperament, or your particular stage in life, or to a negative experience either long past or recent. Doubt may have more to do with your personality or your personal history than it does with the facts, with the issue of truth, or the conflict between faith and knowledge.

Who knows what were the roots of Thomas’s doubts about the resurrection? Eventually he came to believe. Some of us take longer to process the information we need in order to experience the presence of Christ. That does not mean that we should give up or summarily reject the evidence we have in hand. It means that we need to be patient and humble enough to be open to what God might want to teach us.

A week later, the next Sunday, the first day of the week, the Lord’s day, when the disciples were gathered together again (the second Sunday in the Christian era), Jesus came and stood among them, as he does whenever his church gathers. He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” When Thomas saw Jesus he acknowledged him with words of personal faith, “My Lord and my God.”

Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Jesus says to every one, “Stop doubting and believe.” That means making a choice. Will I consciously believe, or will I choose to continue to doubt? Doubt is a decision, just as much as faith. Feelings of uncertainty or doubt, should not prevent me from making the decision to believe in Jesus and to follow him. Sometimes I have to act on my choices before the feelings will follow. The habit of keeping company with Jesus, will result in a secure relationship of love, which fosters faith. Walking in the way of Christ each day, can gradually dispel doubt, until it withers away through lack of attention. Faith needs to be fed, and doubt needs to be starved, through prayer, study, service, witness, and worship. In that way the past can be put behind me, and the future becomes an adventure of faith, with all the possibilities the kingdom of God promises. It is the only way to live.

O Almighty God, who brings good out of evil and turns the shadow of death into morning: Hear our prayers this day as we remember those of many nations and differing faiths whose lives were cut short by the fierce flames of anger and hatred. Hasten the time when the menace of war shall be removed. Cleanse both us and those perceived to be our enemies of all hatred and distrust. Pour out the spirit of peace on all the rulers of our world that we may be brought through strife to the lasting peace of the kingdom of your Son; Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.